End of Grade 1 progress video - please offer constructive advice

[Rkr87]

Morning,

Thank you all for your responses! I didn’t expect to wake up to so many great comments!

@Richard_close2u

When strumming, at any tempo and with any strum pattern, you want your forearm / wrist to be in fluid and constant motion, swinging up and down in a rhythmic pulse like the pendulum of a clock. Regardless of whether the strings are hit on that particular up or down arc. Much of the time you have this but on occasion you stop the swing and wait for the next.

I do know this and I do force myself to do it when I’m practicing strumming exercises. However, I seem to be in a bit of a catch 22 situation with it when playing songs - I can force myself to do this if I think about my strumming while playing, but as Justin suggests I shouldn’t be thinking about strumming I fall into the resting my hand sometimes when not thinking about it. I guess spending longer on strumming exercises during consolidation will help me make the pendulum movement more automatic?

@Richard_close2u

Playing at a steady tempo, no matter how slow the speed, is far more important than playing something at the ‘proper’ speed. This applies to songs and riffs etc. If you find that you are having to take a pause to go from one chord to the next or from one riff section to the next then you are going too fast. Learn and practice it really s-l-o-w, slow enough that you can play it with few errors and maintain a constant speed. Only go faster when you can do that when the errors iron out and you can play mistake free.

I do this but I think my problem here is I practice until I can do it once at a speed without a mistake and then immediately increase the speed and practice there, what I might try instead is practicing at a slower speed until I can always do it without making a mistake at that speed before moving on.

@Richard_close2u

I notice that when you are playing finger style you have no anchor for your picking hand at all apart from your elbow on the guitar body. That is not stable enough to develop a consistently accurate style of play. Some people anchor their little finger on the guitar body just below the sound hole or near to it. Some people (and I do this) anchor by gently resting their palm on the bridge behind the saddles - so as not to palm mute but to give some hand stability. It is a very individual choice but I strongly recommend you find a way of anchoring so your hand is not vaguely floating somewhere above the strings.

I’ve noted further comments from others re fingerstyle anchor - I think what I’m going to do re fingerstyle for the moment is pause until Justin introduces it in Grade 2. I didn’t watch/read any material on how I should be doing it (other than the brief instruction Justin gives in the Mad World tutorial) before trying it so have no doubt there’s a lot of things I should be doing differently. I will make sure I try with both anchoring methods and without to see which I find most comfortable, though.

@frito

Hi Ryan. I am impressed with the logs you created and your level of practice. I’m sure the logs help keep you on track. Better yet, down the road you will be able to look back and see the progress you have made.

Yeah, my main reason for keeping the log is to keep myself accountable - I tend to procrastinate on things if I don’t set myself a schedule with targets/goals.

@Dave911

I have bookmarked this one because I really like what you are doing with the excel log. I have had a few false starts trying to put something similar together but I have not gotten too far. I hope you won’t mind if I steal a bit of the way you have put it together?

Feel free to take anything you like If it helps, I’d happily share the spreadsheet via email?

@J.W.C

Also, I suggest never using nail clippers. Instead, use files (I use a set of glass nail files) to keep your nails at the preferred length. Avoiding clippers helps make your nails stronger and less prone to chipping or splitting or breaking. After filing, you can also smooth and polish the nails (the edge is the important part – not so much the whole surface of your nails).

You can also “shape” the nail with the files giving you “ramps” of nail. Very common in the classical guitar world .

I have been doing this, I actually watched a video tutorial on how classical guitarists shape their nails using a file - I may look into a polish as I’ve found the steel string seems to be making my ramps quite rough to the point I need to lightly file them again.

Sorry I skipped over your comments re the anchor finger, I addressed my plan re fingerstyle in response to Richard above.

@adi_mrok

Overall I know you are after some criticism and things you should do or don’t, but you really are doing well let me tell you first. Good chord changes, you feel the rhythm, your body language is showing that you enjoy it and this is a big step in playing in order to keep the momentum going. So whatever comments you get let me tell you this - you are doing fine and if you carry on with Justin lessons most of those issues eventually will go away.

Thank you, Adrian. I do really enjoy it, I’m glad that shows in my body language. One thing I have noticed that I’d like to stop is I pull faces and suck my lip when concentrating haha…

@adi_mrok

play as much along the songs or along the metronome as you can. You are still early days so if you play by yourself without any backing track you might be out of times from time to time,

I’m definitely going to start doing this, I currently only use the metronome during strumming exercises. Will work to include it when I’m doing song work too.

@adi_mrok

You have a pretty impressive amount of songs you have been learning. What I would like to see is a more focused approach moving forward - take 3 easy songs and nail them until taking new ones in. Record those only when you are happy with the quality, publish in AVOYP and we can tell you if we think it’s nailed trying to learn 12345 songs at the same time can cause a headache and you might not learn a single song as close to 100% accurate as possible

This is a great suggestion as you’ve pretty much nailed it! I can only actually do 2 of the songs I’ve learnt all the way through from memory (Eleanor Rigby and 505), for the others I have to refresh myself on what the chords and song structure are before trying them. One of the things I’m trying to contend with is a short attention span, I like to learn new things, I’ll be more strict with myself over my consolidation period.

@adi_mrok

last - thumb position while fingerpicking. Try to keep it forward rather than curling it down behind rest of the fingers. My fav advice from @SS7 - this way your picking will be more accurate.

Do you have an image or a video of what you mean? I find the thumb picking the hardest part of playing with my fingers, my bass notes come out really quiet and off beat.

I’ve skipped over your anchor finger part per above.

@DavidP

on your plan to consolidate Grade 1. My suggestion would be to set yourself some objectives for the consolidation phase and stay with it until achieving those, rather than just thinking about it in terms of a time window.

After reading some of the comments here I’m definitely going to do this, I have a couple of items already;

• Strumming hand always moves in a pendulum motion even on skipped beats without thinking.
• Learn 5 songs all the way through without mistakes.
• Play at least one song without looking at the fretboard.

@DavidP

I’d also suggest considering more frequent updates to the Learning Log, perhaps after every module in the Grade rather than just at the end. I think receiving feedback more frequently will be beneficial. I expect you have already heard Justin say “Practice makes permanent (not perfect)”. More frequent feedback will firstly bring more frequent encouragement and also highlight aspects to work on sooner, help prevent perhaps establishing bad habits than can be harder to correct later if well practiced.

I may do this, I was hesitant to post as I don’t want to place an expectation on the more experienced guitarists in the community to have to listen to my shoddy playing without being paid for it!

Thanks again for the feedback, everyone!